I attended the SIM Summit in Prague last week. It was quite interesting from a number of perspectives for me. I had the distinct feeling that some of the delegates were looking at finding a reason for having a SIM card in a phone. On the Wednesday-afternoon I presented a talk during the "mobile payment" portion of the conference. I shared the platform with some of the older companies in this space (paybox, SK telecom) and some of the newer ones (Monetise).

The usual questions on why it is taking so long and why we have not seen the "google" of mobile payments yet where asked. I almost had the feeling that critics were saying that one should stop working on this type of solutions since it does not seem to deliver any benefits. In the meantime, the discussions on the "ecosystem" of NFC payments almost reached fever pitch at some stages. Every-one was talking about their pilot projects and what they have found. Yet it was clear that almost no phones would be available for this kind of thing (estimates were that not even 20% of phones will be NFC enabled by 2012), that nobody really knows where and what the business model for mobile NFC will be.

For me, though, mobile payments and banking is succeeding dramatically. From where I am sitting and what I am seeing a massive revolution is happening and growth in mobile payments is at a rate that have never before been seen in financial services before. If we compare any other change in financial services with mobile payments, none is happening at the rate of mobile payments. Look at how long it took credit cards to become mainstream, or ATM's or Internet banking (and how much has been invested before it was successful). In countries like South Africa, DRC and Nigeria (where we have deployed solutions) and others like Austria, Slovenia, South-Korea and (of course) the Philippines, it is clear that mobile payments are delivering good solutions to subscribers, stakeholders and banks.

Failures like Simpay and others should not be taken as the template for this industry.

As many of us know that Google Adsense program policies prohibits any means of encouraging users to click on Google ads or bringing excessive attention to ad units, adding to its previous clarification on placing images next to Adsense Ads they have clarified on few more guidelines for the AdSense for content and AdSense for search ads.

Phrases such as "click the ads," "support our sponsors," "visit these recommended links," or other similar language that could apply to the Google ads on your site is not allowled. Which means publishers are not permitted to label the Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements." This is beacuse for most AdSense for content and AdSense for search ads are served on a cost per click (CPC) or cost per thousand impression (CPM) basis. It's generally harder for an advertiser to decide on a CPC/CPM value than it is to decide on a Cost per Action CPA (like in Google Referral program) value because multiple factors go into deciding the value of a click or impression.

Encouraging clicks on these ads not only drives lower quality traffic to an advertiser’s site but provides poor data for an advertiser to make an appropriate bid on the click. This results in a poor experience for visitors and advertisers, which isn’t good for you as a publisher. So visitors should only click on Google ads if they're interested in the services being advertised. Encouraging them to click on your Google ads, either directly or indirectly, can lead to inflated advertiser costs and this may can cause an account to be disabled.

This site brings you a new way to use your mobile phones and promises that you will never miss a call you want to take and also never take a call you surely want to miss! simply sign up for a free account in grandcentral and get one, unified new phone number. When people contact this new number, it will automatically ring all your phones at the same time, allowing you to pick up all your calls wherever you are.

Using the same service you could also Customized Greetings - record custom greetings for friends, families, business, and romantic partners. CallSwitch - switch a call between any of your phones irrespective of phone providers. Centralized Voicemails - captures all voicemails in one location and accessible via phone or Web. RingShare - play a music while callers are waiting for your pick up. ListenIn on Your Callers - listen to callers first and decide if you want to take a call or not. Record Your Calls - press 4 and your call will be recorded.. etc..

The theme of this company is simplicity. Even though we have landlines for work and home plus 2-3 mobile phones, it is not a guarantee that we will not miss any calls. In fact, checking different answering machines and voicemail messages prove to be very taxing at times. So heres' the solution..

Reinventing the slider phone, the MOTORIZR Z8 brings multimedia, speed, pleasure and mobile broadband¹ to your fingertips. Providing you with the ultimate in entertainment, the MOTORIZR Z8 allows you to watch crystal clear video at 30 frames per second through a large QVGA 16m TFT display.

The device also supports optional expandable memory up to 4GB using microSD, which is enough space for full length movies or hours of music. The Motorola Z8 MOTORIZR runs the Symbian UIQ 9.1 operating system. The Z8 has an impressive feature list, including a 2.0 megapixel camera, a 2.2 inch QVGA screen supporting up to 16 million colours, and support for HSDPA, the mobile broadband service that offers download speeds of up to 3.6mbps. The design of the Z8 is unique among current handsets, when the slide is fully extended the Z8 curves to fit the contours of your face. Inevitably comparisons are drawn to the Nokia ‘banana’ phone of years gone by. Video playback is at 30 fps offering a very smooth and enjoyable viewing experience.

In addition to the video playback options, Motorola have also enhanced the media capabilities on the handset by including the Sky By Mobile service on the phone. This allows SKY subscribers to log into their account from the phone, view the full SKY program guide, access news and sports stories, and you can even set your SKY+ box to record programs whilst you are out and about. And if that is not enough, you can stream SKY channels to the handset over 3G.

The hybrids are out. These Samsung mutants of the data storage world are part hard disk drive, part flash memory cache. They have both the density to deliver 80GB, 120GB, or even 160GB of storage space in a neat 2.4-inch space, along with the OneNAND flash technology to give 50 percent faster read-write speeds, as well as greener power consumption, and faster boot time. And like any good mutant, the hybrid hard drives can take a beating better than your typical hard drive. The flash memory allows the hard drive to not have to run as often as in a regular hard drive.

In fact, the hybrid can remain idle 99 percent of the time your laptop is on. That means the drive doesn't heat up and risk burning out as much, and it's less likely to suffer shock damage or data loss. That's what you get when you meld a 2.5 inch hard drive with 128 or 256 MB of flash memory, with a little help from Microsoft's ReadyDrive software. The MH80 hybrid hard drive series from Samsung delivers a 70 percent to 90 percent reduction in power usage, compared with typical hard drives. That sort of energy savings can translate into an additional half-hour to your battery life.

Furthermore, the drive operates at a lower temperature than regular HD, reducing the likelihood of damage and hard drive failure. Although Microsoft has touted flash drives as a means to improve the performance of its Vista operating system, there are two types of flash drives. The first, more common form is known as ReadyBoost, where a specially formatted USB flash drive stores Windows system files, making boot cycles and restores from hibernation faster and more efficient.

The world's biggest handset maker Nokia and mobile telecoms carriers have recently agreed on a global initiative to turn cell phones into wallets. Consumers will be able to use a phone as a wallet or as an access card simply by waving it over a wireless reader--and in some cases punching a personal-identification number, or PIN, into the phone. Cingular Wireless cardholders in New York City already are testing the service that allows them to make purchases with their cell phones early this year. Consumers in South Korea and Japan have already been using cell phones to pay for things. Infact Cell phones are already widely used as electronic wallets in Japan, where more than 12.6 million consumers already have their credit cards embedded in a chip in cell phones.

Mifare -- developed by NXP, which was formerly known as Philips (PHG.AS) Semiconductors -- and Felica developed by Sony are two of the most widely used formats used for access cards for buildings and public transport as well as cell phones which double as electronic wallets.

MasterCard, is also involved in the initiative, which is cheaper and much faster than other wireless payment experiments, like those using SMS text messages. So very soon carrying a mobile phone would become almost as important as carrying a wallet

Japan is one of the most earthquake prone countries in the world. Do you have any idea how people there surf the internet ?Well click here to know....

Lot of things in this world are beyond our control, the links on this site as well... click here to know

Well I thought of taking some time out from my daily posts and share the above tricks.. these are very simple scripts which you could share with your friends via email, orkut... Just mail me your id.. and i could send you these script (if you do not know how to get the script from my above post)

Recently I have started using Flickr - an online photo sharing services from Yahoo. In my opinion Flickr is really cool and has some real great collection of pictures. I personally like to save pictures locally to my system but selecting them one at a time to download was too much of a hassle, so i went looking for some better alternative.

Since there is no offical application/software released by Flickr, Flickr enthusiasts have developed some excellent Flickr Photo downloading tools using the Flicker API. Managed to some solutions, here are my recommendations.

1. Flickr AutoDownloadr : is a small, freeware Windows application written using the Flickr API and AutoIt. Using it, you can pick any photos from Flickr - yours, your friends', random strangers' - and create a slideshow from them, which displays in a fullscreen window.Download Link (Thanks Ben)

Well this is an upgrade from the M600, with a key feature of M700 to now handle 3G connections, as well as the EDGE and GPRS capabilities. Its specifications are 10.8 x 5.8 x 1.8cm, 150g in weight. That 3G support certainly helps with functions such as downloading email attachments and video clips, giving it an edge for business or pleasure.

The M600 included Orange's satnav technology but then it needed an additional Bluetooth device to pickup GPS satellite signals. The M700 brings that technology under its hood as is increasingly common in PDAs and smart phones. The lens obviously has to be on the front so you can see the other caller and they can see you.

However, you can also choose which of the PDA's cameras to send images from during the call, switching back and forth to show them your face or what the camera on the reverse can see.

Well, you could also check out this 1 minute video review of the phone below.

Intel is getting ready to release its own version of the mini-tablet, it will be announcing a new Linux-based ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) platform. Alternately called as ‘Mobile Internet Device’ (MID), the devices will sport 4.5 to 6.0 inch screens offering resolutions up to 800 x 480 and 1024 x 600 pixels, with the target audience described as “consumers and prosumers” and not mobile professionals. Red Flag Linux and Canonical (Ubuntu) are the first vendors that have signed onto the program.

That generation of devices will also come with a special low-power chip called "Silverthorne" that is based on Intel's 45-nanometer manufacturing technology. Expected to be released next year, the UMPCs are tipped to be an extension of the successful Centrino mobile brand, with the CPU components (codenamed Stealey) packing dual-core processors clocked at 600-800MHz.

Although capable of running Windows XP and Vista, Intel is looking to kit the devices out with an embedded Linux OS supplemented by a mix of open-source and proprietary code. But while Intel waits for the UMPC or MID to take off, it's continuing to improve its products for traditional notebook PCs. In 2008, Intel is expected to launch the "Montevina" notebook technology, which will come with built-in support for WiMax, the long-range wireless networking technology.

Lately YouTube has been working very hard to release a political video blog, which they did last week and was called the "Citizntube" This new blog is being edited by Steve Grove, YouTube’s Citizentube/YouTube News & Politics Editor, the channel appears intended to aggregate select political videos already appearing on the rest of the site.

As per Steve Citizentube's mission is to add fuel to the revolution that is YouTube politics. YouTube's concept was very loud and clear, it wanted to bring a platform where everyone, from users to candidates, has the same chance to be seen and heard and let the best ideas win. Already we've seen players from all over the political spectrum using YouTube in powerful ways.

A bone marrow drive broadcast on YouTube brought 1,000 donors to help a stranger. A video series on Iraq has begun to bring a human face to the war. And a message from an American politician in Spanish reached across cultural barriers through YouTube.

Hide IP Platinum has released an updated version of its software, so if are concerned about Internet privacy? Want to hide your IP address? This is the software you are looking for! the only thing you need to do is open Hide IP Platinum. Hide IP Platinum will find the proxy server available to you and set it as your proxy server automatically. There is nothing you need to be concern of.

Key features of this software- The ONLY software could hide your IP behind ELITE proxy servers on the market!- Protect you from any website that wants to monitor your reading interests and spy upon you through your unique IP address - your ID in the Internet - Avoid your personal information be used to send you spam and junk emails by many marketers and advertising agencies who having information about your interests and knowing your IP address as well as your email - Keeping your computer away from hacker attacks by hiding your IP address as well as information about your operation system - Ability to frequently change IP addresses increases privacy- Enable and disable Hide IP Platinum as your wish with a single click - Bypass the restrictions by some owners of Internet resources on users from certain countries or geographical regions - Post on bulletin boards without displaying your real IP address - Doesn't like oher services force you to pay a monthly fee for anonymous surfing. For a low one-time price, you can visit whatever web sites without anyone ever finding out- Works with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003

Keeping your privacy is simple and easy: To Download click here or here

Adobe, plans to preview new software called the Adobe Media Player, a free program that will let people play videos on their personal computers, which is the domain of Microsoft's Windows Media Player, among others. This was announced at NAB 2007 tradeshow in Las Vegas and Adobe also has plans to release a free, public version of the software later this year.

This software is unique because it promotes and supports the use of Flash playback, apparently in a higher quality than the regular Flash player can. In contrast to the standalone Flash player client, the Media Player is positioned as an extended application that will try to create a marketplace for video content: Users manage and view videos.

Adobe also plans to offer its Media Player as a "cross-platform" software that the company claims is developed on open Internet standards such as HTML, RSS and SMIL. The firm said that the application will run on Windows XP and Vista, and Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 on launch, with support for Linux to follow later.

There are hundreds of websites and media conpanies which provides video contents and TV contents on the internet. If you happen to go to the official sites of Forbes, Reuters, BBC, ABC News, CBS, MSNBC etc you could find some hi-quality video contents, and ofcourse there are YouTube, Blip.TV, Metacafe which has user-generated content.

With so much content already available on the net is there a smart way of searching these contents?? well we happen to come across Blinkx.com which claims to have the most advanced video search engine. Its actually fed by automatic spiders that crawl the web for audio video content and content partnerships with over 200 leading content and media companies.

Blinkx also indexes the audio portion from the video using speech recognition - that makes their video search results more relevant to your search keywords whereas other sites might only indexes video title, description and tags.

Users can not only search for content, but can also create personal TV channels that automatically splice relevant content together. And if you want to track video stories on any topic directly Blinkx also provides an RSS feed for each of the your search results.

Blinkx advanced search gives users many differing ways to search through blinkx’s index. You can choose to click on individual partners’ channels located on the right of the page. You can refine your search by adding in words to the provided parameters such as with the exact phrase or without the words.

In addition, blinkx lets you search results that filter content based on whether that content has preview videos or can be watched completely through the blinkx player. Just type your search term in whatever box suits you and chose from the kinds of video you want to see.

One of the biggest challenges of bringing low cost banking to rural areas are the cost of distributing banking products. It takes a lot of time and effort to get someone to open a bank account - especially given the stringent regulatory requirements. I have seen some instances where banks have a requirement to have a photo-copy of this and that, as well as firm identification, in addition to a form that must be filled in and signed - quite a cumbersome and difficult process.

So some companies have started deploying a mechanism where agents are utilised to distribute these bank accounts. This means that some-one works on a commission basis to get people to open bank accounts. These agents do not earn a fixed salary, but rather get paid for each account that is opened by them. Great idea! Often this is also a mechanism to create work for people that do not have work. I have always been intrigued by this approach. I do subscribe to creating work and getting the community involved with banking themselves, but I am not sure if the economies work. How many accounts do an agent have to open to be able to earn a living wage? This is especially difficult if the commission must be earned on a low cost bank account. All of the sums that I do make this approach a marginal employment for the agents and I am not sure if it will work.

Low cost banks have two remedies:

a. Enable an agent to open bank accounts, but also sell more lucrative products (that have better margins) - preferably products that require a bank account (like insurance, loan products etc.). or

b. Enable customers to open a bank account themselves (even on their phone) with no assistance and no photo-copies. This is possible, and have been implemented by Fundamo.

Orkuting is the buzz word nowadays in the social networking circles, many of us have already being addicted to orkut.. but then the concept itself is so good. Adding to my previous collection of Orkut tips and tricks, here are some latest tricks that you could try in Orkut... Enjoy

1. Writing scraps in reverse - Add & # 8 2 3 8 before your scrap without spaces in between these characters. The whole text will get reversed on submitting it. Isn’t It Cool.

We all love to watch DVD quality movies, but if you are sick of renting a DVD every time you want to watch it and is looking for a way to have your own copy of the movie, well a possible solution could be to RIP the DVD to your hard disk or to a CD.

Technically it is possible to squeeze your DVD contents to a CD or to your hard disk in various audio/video formats. The process involves two steps i.)Decoding the data files on the DVD and storing it on your hard disk, to do this you require a DVD decrypter. Free DVD decrypters are easily available on the internet, we recommend this one (can be downloaded for free) ii.)Encoding or copying the data back to a CD by compressing it using codecs like MPEG or DivX. Our recommendation is auto gordian knot also known as AutoGK (can be downloaded for free).

Easy VCD: is a free utility that can rip a dvd movie and output it to a CD or as a MPEG files on your hard disk. Support both VCD (MPEG-1) and SVCD (MPEG-2) formats.

Smartripper: is another free software to create a copy of a DVD on a hard drive. The program supports three copy modes: Movie (copy the movie only), Files (copy selected files only) and Backup (copy whole disk).

First of all is there a difference ? Yes, There is. There are key concepts that we must understand before explaining which is the difference.

bit: minimum unit that handles a computer. (zero a one).byte: it is a set of 8 bits and represents a character.bps: (bit per seconds) unit of measurement of information transference.bytes/s: (bytes per seconds) unit of measurement of transference of information in byte per second.

The Internet connection speed is measured in Kilobits (Kb) which is different from Kilobytes (KB) the later being used to measure file sizes on a system.

Therefore if you ask for a 1Mbps broadband connection, it will take minimum 8 seconds to download a 1 MB file from the internet. Most Broadband companies define 1K as 1,000 and not as 1,024 which is the used for computing. So next time you are looking in to your internet speed do keep this in mind.

You can also install a bandwidth monitoring software that will track your internet usage behind the scenes and assist you diagnose slow internet connections and whether the ISP is giving your the promised speed or not.

Motorola recently announced the launch of Motorola's flagship entertainment Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), the MOTOROKR E6 in India, Just as we predicted in Dec 2006. The E6 has been specifically designed to create superior experiences around video, music, games, and photos.

Whether you want to capture special moments on camera, listen to music anytime, anywhere, play games or movies, or even check your e-mail while on the go, the E6 makes it all simple and easy. Designed as the thinnest, slickest entertainment PDA yet, the E6 is just 14.5mm thick. Most of its stylish exterior is taken up by a super-sized 2.4-inch 240 x 320 TFT TouchWindow screen, again a first for a mobile handset.

A multimedia phone, the E6 features: a high-resolution 2 mega-pixel camera with macro view and 8x zoom; high-quality CIF(352x288) video recording; a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack; dedicated music keys; MPEG-4, H.263, RV compliant Realplayer; and removable SD card memory slot. Music ID is a song identification service that allows users identify the artist and album information of songs being played in their immediate surroundings.

With support for MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, RA, WAV, MIDI, AMR-NB, andAMR-WB, the phone enables users enjoy their music through any of their favorite headsets, including wireless Bluetooth stereo headphones.

A Russian computer security company Kaspersky Lab recently announced that it had discovered the first virus designed specifically to infect iPods. They named the virus "Podloso".In order for the virus to function, Linux has to be installed on the iPod.

If the virus is installed on the iPod by the user, the virus then installs itself to the folder which contains program demo versions. Podloso cannot be launched automatically without user involvement.

Once launched, the virus scans the device's hard disk and infects all executable .elf format files. Any attempt to launch these files will cause the virus to display a message on the screen which says "You are infected with Oslo the first iPodLinux Virus".

However it is a typical proof of concept virus, which is created in order to demonstrate that it is possible to infect a specific platform which does not pose a real threat.

Last year in September, Apple shipped some Video iPods which were carrying a malicious file, Windows RavMonE.exe. Windows RavMonE.exe affected only Windows computers and up to date anti-virus software could detect and remove it.

Mozilla's Lab, the company behind FireFox has been experimenting with ways to incorporate popular features, like social networking applications, into the Firefox browser for quite some time now. They call it 'The Coop' an add-on for Firefox that will tap the social aspects of popular web services such as photo sharing, blogging, and tagging, as well as sharing the user's activity with their friends.

Firefox could become the place where you keep up with everything online. The main interface consists of boxes representing friends whom you select. Their faces are supposed to light up when they have something to share. More practically, you're able to sort by friends, their content, or content type. There are more specs in the The Coop's wiki

The Coop could set Firefox apart from Internet Explorer once again - IE7 delivered most of the features users liked in Firefox but were absent from IE6. It would not be surprising if Microsoft, Apple and other browser developers quickly begin to shadow the project's progress.

Picture this, hundreds of songs on your computer and you mobile has limited storage space but still you can listen to all of your song collection via your mobile phone.

Well Winamp's latest beta release 'Winamp Remote' does that. So now you can turn your home computer into a streaming music server for your cell phone. Winamp Remote on Mobile connects you with an entirely new level of freedom - the freedom to choose.

Now, change your music with your mood. Well if you are thinking about the playback quality, then heres' the reply: Winamp Remote on Mobile automatically streams content to your mobile device's browser at the appropriate bitrate for your data connection and format.

MasterCard is planning to pilot international remittances with mobile network operators. Indications are that a few pilots will be set up and run with the intention to learn and to ultimately roll-out in a big scale to other operators. One of the pilots will initially pair India's largest mobile operator Bharti Airtel with the State Bank of India corresponding with a mobile operator and bank sponsor in another country. For the pilot programme, the recipients of funds will be notified of cash transfers via a text message sent over the mobile networks. They will be able to access those funds via debit and prepaid accounts issued by local banks.

In another initiative a Vodafone subsidiary (the Kenyan mobile operator Safaricom) and Citigroup is planning to test a similar system under which Kenyan workers in the UK will be able to text payments instructions for money transfers to dependants back home. The recipient will receive a text containing a PIN which is then used to collect the cash at a choice of outlets.

What is the relevance of these initiatives? Should it be taken seriously and what should banks and mobile operators do in the light of these pilots?

I think that these initiatives (and others that are likely to evolve) will definitely succeed - as a matter of fact it has the potential to succeed spectacularly. Parties involved with this will benefit significantly because of the additional revenue that will flow out of business that they were not involved with traditionally. But the most interesting by-product of this will be the number of people that potentially could be drawn into the banking space. Consider how many people will now received money from abroad on a bank account (which they now need if they want to benefit from this system). I believe that the real advantage of this initiative is the market for ancilliary product that banks will now be able to sell to these consumers (ranging from saving to lending products, including risk product - like insurance).

Any bank that operates in developing economies (or have clients with interests in developing economies - like migrant workers and expats), should evaluate these initiatives carefully and develop strategies to get benefits from what is about to happen. It is advisable to contract and work with companies with experience in this space (like Fundamo - my company).

If you have been looking ways to save your laptop batteries, you might have come across many articles online. The articles are always written in detail for users like you and me to easily understand.. like this one from Jay.

But having this demonstrated via a video recording makes it even more easier to understand. Kipkay has shared this Laptop Battery Hack via a video recording, infact by using this hack you can save money as well.

If your are a blogger or a website owner, have you ever imagined about the behaviour of a website visitor ? Eg. how much time a visitor spends on your site ? What are the links that he clicks ? etc.. Well ofcourse we have google analytics for that but this free service has gone a step ahead of regular site analysis.

Infact what it does is it litteraly lets you record your users' browsing session and play them back. The service is in beta mode and its the service from Tapefailure. Tapefailure does not collect basic data that other analytics software (such as Google Analytics) gathers. Instead, it focuses on what the user does, not who the user is or what they use. Even going about and using this service is also very simple. You simply need sign up for an account, which takes only a couple minutes, and then create a unique identifier for each website you wish to track.

After that, you just drop in a small piece of Javascript into each page you would like to track, and from there Tapefailure handles everything else. Tapefailure tracks your users and records both tapes of your users' browsing and statistics about the users' browsing session. All you have to do is log into your account and from there you have the ability to view the recorded tapes and statistics.

The idea here is to help understand and analyse the behavior of the user and improve your site.. just as they say Record, Review, Revise.

Firefox has always been an excellent alternative to the Internet Explorer, infact more and more internet users, bloggers are using firefox because its actually faster than IE, there are number of free addons available which could make life simpler.. (more reasons why Firefox is better than IE).. infact if you haven't tried firefox do check out the latest version here.But the one thing that always bugs me is although Firefox has a very efficient pop up blocker, every time you used its download manager (which is really good) a new mini download window pops up.. and you can not close it untill the download is complete.

Lately i had been looking for a solution and then I came across this new firefox addon which solved my problem. Its called the Download Statusbar, which is a browser extension that allows you to keep track of ongoing and completed downloads in a hide-away statusbar.

It auto-hides when not in use, single-click pause and resume, Resume all, Cancel all, and Remove all finished - available from the context menu of the bar itself are some of its features.

I suppose Visa is as bank as one can get. Most banks are members of VISA - at least those banks that want to be taken seriously. VISA is the pioneer of payments in the world with new products and technology frequently being announced. dotMobi is an organisation thatspecialises in the development and promotion of applications and websites for the mobiledevice. It would be hard to find something more, well, eh,mobile. So when VISA decided to invest in dotMobi, anybody interested in mobile banking should sit up and take notice.

VISA did buy a stake in dotMobi recently. Neither party were prepared to disclose more detail, but VISA subsequently registered a few domains - visa.mobi, electron.mobi, plus.mobi, etc. and a few more, but don't try and surf them, because VISA has not yet posted any content to the sites. In the meantime they have the domains.

What is the relevance of this move? Clearly some executives in VISA is of the opinion that the mobile space is important. Important enough to buy a stake in a company like dotMobi. What is unclear though is what the rationale is for VISA to invest in this company. Surely, dotMobi will allow Mastercard to also register mastercard.mobi and maestro.mobi. Also, even if VISA makes a nice return on their investment, should they not have applied their capital in a different way (like giving it back to shareholders, or even better cardholders)?

I have difficulty seeing any strategic reason for VISA to take up this equity. But then it is a definite sign that banks are starting to get more of an interest in the mobile space. Maybe this purchase may trigger a renewed interest in mobile banking.

Adobe recent announcement at the CTIA Wireless show in Orlando that they’re bringing their Adobe Flashcast service to the United States exclusively through Verizon is now happening. Meaning watching video off the internet just got a lot easier on your mobile phone.

Basically how flashcast works is it cuts out the middle man, offering channels filled with text and video content on a specific subject such as sports, weather, or entertainment that are automatically 'cast' to cell phone when your online. You can preprogram how often the content is updated, and until it is you can always read and look at the last cast on mobile in its entirety offline.

Now typing to search stuff which was so cumbersome using a cell phone are things of the past. NTT DoCoMo version already is an hit in Japan and Verizon would offer something similar to the NTT DoCoMo set up; five basic channels, with premium channels to subscribe to at an addition fee.

NFC is an acronymn for "Near Field Communication". (See the NFC Forum). Many projects are currently being conducted to prove the viability of utilising phones with RFID chips in payment procedures. The intention is that one would be able to "swipe" your phone instead of "swiping" a credit or debit crd at a point of sale terminal. The picture on the right is an experimental deployment currently being conducted by Gemalto.

In order to minimise the impact of existing payment systems, all of the deployments are basically an extension of existing card based payment schemes. The phone swipe at a terminal initiate almost exactly the same transaction to the issueing bank as if a card have been swiped. The effect of this payment could also be achieved by imbedding the NFC chip in your sunglasses or for that matter in your credit card. The system does not recognise that the chip is actually in a phone, it just respond to the NFC chip. This is great technology for a number of reasons. The speed of concluding a transaction and the reliability of the infrastructure are big advantages over existing card based transactions. But why are NFC payments sometimes refered to as mobile payments? Nothing is mobile about it.

The terminals that read the NFC chip is static, the payment is routed in exactly the same way than any (or all) existing card transactions are. So is it because a NFC chip can be embedded in a phone that we call it mobile payments? That would mean that if an NFC chip was embedded in watch, we would call it Timeous payments? A reason could be that we can carry the payment instrument (the NFC chip) around. The payment instrument is therefor mobile going with us from one terminal to another.... just as we currently do with our credit cards. So that would mean that we have been using mobile payment instruments all the time (by carrying our credit cards from one terminal to another with us).

True mobile payment instruments should enable the payer to perform a payment at any place. (For instance the payer should be able to pay for parking without having to be close to his/her parked car). NFC payments today (and for as long as one can imagine) will only be happening at points where NFC enabled terminals are installed. This is definitely NOT mobile payments.